The Village Voice caught our eye with their post today. They were lucky to have one of those phone interviews with the man himself. Excerpts from The Village Voice:

“Each adaptation is a completely different project,” Cronenberg said during a recent phone interview. “I don’t have an approach I try to impose on that process because each book is different, and I’m different, and what I try to achieve with the movie is [different] in each case.” He added: “The two media [i.e., film and prose] are really different, and you are inevitably making choices. There is no exact way to translate something directly to the screen. We’re creating a new thing. You have to accept that. You will therefore be making all kinds of changes, consciously or not.”

…

Cronenberg also did not want to find a way to approximate ideas or sentiments that he felt could only be digested in DeLillo’s original prose. For example, when DeLillo asked Cronenberg how he would adapt excerpts from a notebook written by Benno Levin (Paul Giamatti), a mysterious frump who stalks Eric throughout the film, Cronenberg’s response was characteristically direct: “You handle it by leaving it out.”

“There’s no way I can make a voiceover of someone reading Benno’s journal,” Cronenberg said. “It’s a complete admission of failure when you have somebody read you the novel like you’re a kid at bedtime. That reads as if you’ve failed to reimagine the work as cinema. But what I do give you is Paul Giamatti’s face, and his eyes, and his face, and his hair, and his body, and that gives you something you don’t get in the novel. That’s the trade-off.”

…

Similarly, another key change to the book’s narrative came when Cronenberg cast Pattinson, who, perhaps appropriately, plays a young hotshot who’s prematurely contemplating his own obsolescence. Cronenberg said that he never really talked to Pattinson about the film’s main themes or what Eric symbolized. Instead, he said Pattinson was more concerned with whether Cronenberg thought he was good enough to play Eric. “We didn’t discuss any of these abstract things,” Cronenberg recounted. “You can’t shoot an abstraction. You cannot photograph an abstraction. And likewise, an actor cannot act an abstraction. You can’t say to an actor, ‘You will be the embodiment of American capitalism.'”

Click HERE to read more from The Village Voice’s interview with David Cronenberg.

Another quickie interview with Robert Pattinson popped up from his time in Cannes during the Cosmopolis press junket. In this Malone’s Movie Minute, Rob talks about the script and stickin’ to it. 😉

Lastly, how about some contest info?

Movie Web is hosting a giveaway! Click HERE to win a Cosmopolis poster autographed by David Cronenberg! Also, we’ll be hosting our own giveaway this week and next to celebrate the US promo and release date. The contest this week (Aug. 10th) will be worldwide and next week (date: TBA) will be US residents only. Follow us on twitter to get more details for the contests! Our prizes? A combo pack – 1 soundtrack and 1 movie tie-in novel 🙂

Need to know more info about next week’s Cosmopolis promo in NYC? Click HERE!

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